A WINK ONLY SOAP FANS COULD CATCH
What millions saw as a brief throwaway line on General Hospital was, in truth, a love letter to half a century of daytime storytelling.
When Veronica “Ronnie” Bard looked across the room, locked eyes with Brennan, and softly uttered one word — “Joey” — longtime soap devotees felt the universe fold in on itself.
That single name wasn’t a new plot twist in GH canon. It was a deliberate inside joke, a meta wink crafted for those who remember One Life to Live and its indelible matriarch, Victoria “Viki” Lord Riley Buchanan.
Because the woman now playing Ronnie, six-time Emmy winner Erika Slezak, once ruled Llanview as Viki.
And the actor standing opposite her, Chris McKenna, spent his 1990s run on OLTL as — yes — Joey Buchanan, Viki’s son.’
For a heartbeat, the two weren’t Ronnie and Brennan.
They were mother and child again, meeting across decades of soap history.THE QUEEN OF LLANVIEW RETURNS
For forty-two years, Erika Slezak was the emotional spine of One Life to Live, guiding Viki Lord through dissociative-identity crises, newsroom wars, doomed marriages, and the tangled web of Buchanan family drama.
When the series aired its final ABC episode in 2012, it closed a chapter not just for Viki but for the entire daytime landscape.
“Daytime has always been about relationships,” Slezak told Variety in a 2009 profile. “You come into people’s homes every day, and they let you stay there for decades.”
Her GH appearance marked her first return to a network soap since OLTL’s ABC finale — a symbolic reunion of ABC Daytime’s shared DNA. For many fans, seeing Slezak back on screen wasn’t just nostalgic; it felt restorative.
“It was like seeing royalty walk back into the palace,” says longtime viewer Maria Lorenzo, moderator of the Facebook group OLTL Forever. “We all gasped when she said ‘Joey.’ That was the moment we realized the writers were giving us a gift.”WHY “JOEY” MATTERED
To casual General Hospital viewers, the line might have sounded like a slip. But to those who spent decades following the OLTL Buchanans, it landed like a secret handshake.
Chris McKenna played Joey Buchanan from 1990 to 1993 and again briefly in 2010. His version of Joey was the golden-hearted heir — earnest, impulsive, forever trying to live up to the Buchanan name. When McKenna walked onto GH as Brennan, fans instantly noticed the multiverse irony: he was sharing scenes with the woman who, in another timeline, was his mother.
“It was surreal,” McKenna later admitted during a podcast appearance on That Soap Show. “We were running lines and suddenly I realized — wait, this is Viki Lord! I grew up on that set. It felt like coming home.”
The show’s writers clearly recognized the poetic symmetry. The “Joey” line was scripted late in production, insiders reveal, after producers learned the two actors would share a scene.
“It wasn’t about crossing storylines,” a GH source told EW. “It was about honoring history. Daytime fans have invested fifty years in these characters. You can’t ignore that kind of emotional currency.”
THE SHARED DNA OF DAYTIME
ABC’s soap lineage runs deep. For decades, One Life to Live, All My Children, and General Hospital occupied adjacent studios in New York and later Los Angeles. Cast members attended the same wrap parties, borrowed wardrobe, even shared production crews. When one show folded, its alumni often resurfaced in another.
That ecosystem fostered an interconnected sense of family rarely seen elsewhere in television. “We called it the ‘ABC Rep Company,’ ” jokes casting director Mark Teschner, who has worked on GH since 1989. “If you’d done good work on OLTL or AMC, we knew you could handle our pace.”
Slezak’s GH cameo extends that legacy — a symbolic bridge between Llanview and Port Charles, two fictional towns that together shaped generations of viewers.
A HISTORICAL FIRST? NOT QUITE
Cross-soap nods aren’t new. GH has winked at its sister series before — from Blair Cramer’s (Kassie DePaiva) guest stint to Todd Manning’s (Roger Howarth) crossover in 2012. But Slezak’s moment carried extra weight because it happened after OLTL’s rights reverted and its universe effectively dissolved.
“It’s the first time Viki Lord’s shadow has reached into another show since 2013,” notes television historian Carolyn Hinsey. “It wasn’t about continuity; it was about recognition. GH was saying, ‘We remember.’ ”
That subtle nod underscores how soap operas function less like separate series and more like chapters in a shared, decades-long narrative experiment.
FANS REACT: “WE FELT SEEN”
Within minutes of the episode airing, X (formerly Twitter) lit up.
“Did Ronnie just call Brennan ‘Joey’? I SCREAMED!” wrote @SoapArchivist.
Another post racked up 30 k likes: “That wasn’t a line — that was a portal.”
The GH subreddit turned into a digital reunion for OLTL veterans, with fans sharing screenshots of Slezak’s earliest scenes from 1971.
“It was genius,” says fan and pop-culture blogger Dana Keen. “You didn’t have to know the history to feel the emotion, but if you did, it hit like poetry.”
ERIKA SLEZAK’S LEGACY
Across more than 40 years, Slezak collected six Daytime Emmys and the respect of colleagues from every corner of the industry. She was known for her professionalism, meticulous preparation, and quiet wit.
“She could do a five-page emotional breakdown in one take,” recalls executive producer Frank Valentini, who also cut his teeth on OLTL. “Having her on GH even for a day reminded everyone what true daytime craftsmanship looks like.”
Slezak herself approached the cameo with humility. “It was wonderful to see familiar faces and meet new ones,” she said in a statement to Soap Opera Digest. “The script had a lovely surprise in it, and I’m glad people caught it.”
